It’s no secret that the world of recruitment is all pretty new to me, and as it rolls up to my second month at Enigma People Solutions I have made a few observations of the industry. The one that jumps out to me is how the industry is judged. Call it naivety but I had not realised the reputation recruiters, in particular IT recruiters, had in today’s market, they seem to be painted as the villains of the recruitment world. What seems to be the hot topic amongst everybody is recruiter’s use of social media.

‘Social recruiting’ – recruiting through the use of social media – is an essential part of today’s hiring process, not just for agencies but also in-house recruiters. With more than 500,000 social job announcements released on Twitter each and every month, gone are the days recruiters can rely solely on job boards for quality candidates. With 94% of agencies already using social recruiting in 2013, it’s no wonder that every social media site out there tailors their content, apps and functionality so businesses can make the most use out of them. On any given day I probably receive about a dozen emails and articles titled ‘Tweet your way to a better business’. Although the traditional candidate databases still have their place, the use of Social Recruiting is favoured for attracting higher candidate quality and less time to hire. LinkedIn is undeniably the most popular for attracting passive candidates but really the list of places to interact with candidates is endless – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr, company blogs, etc. Take it from me; even keeping up with our own social media sites is tricky at times!

Clearly the use of social recruiting in some form or another is here to stay but there are of course the critics who don’t agree with this. I’ve read online and heard plenty of negative comments on the behaviour of agencies on social media sites and I am sure anybody reading this has heard those too. Speaking to a friend at the weekend about my new job (yes that’s what I find myself talking about on a Saturday night – sad, I know) the first thing to be mentioned is how they’ve been getting bombarded with agencies recently. I find myself having to defend not only my shiny new job but the industry on a whole.

The fact is that almost everybody who complains about recruiters uses them. Recruiters are in business only because there is a clear demand for the service they provide, sourcing high quality candidates for clients that they otherwise wouldn’t have found (If this wasn’t the case recruiters wouldn’t stay stay in business very long would they!). By taking the time to engage with candidates, recruiters are best placed to gauge whether or not a candidate is a good fit for the client and company. This being said social networking is only one route and one that’s still very much in it’s infancy – there’s no real substitute for interviewing assessing and matching candidates to vacancies and vice versa. The saga of social media is still fairly new and not everybody gets it right first time – we know this from the media, politicians and other businesses. Granted recruiters have gotten it wrong in some instances and that is exactly where the negativity comes from.

In my experience here, we seem to have a lot of happy candidates; even those that we can’t help find a new role. I’ve also yet to see a negative comment from anyone we’ve approached (but maybe that’s just us?). Of course everybody is entitled to their own opinions on social recruiting, based on their own experiences and judgment. This isn’t a blog to defend Enigma’s policy, I believe our actions and work speaks for itself. All I am saying is since when was it OK to paint an entire industry with the same brush? Not all recruiters are the same just like not all businesses in any other given industry are the same. The age old saying of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is something I think people forget all too often when it comes to this industry.